FEMA Announces New Water Systems Community Lifeline For Disaster Response Operations

On August 1, FEMA modified their existing Community Lifelines construct to include an eighth Lifeline called “Water Systems.” EPA and its water sector partners, represented by the Water Sector Coordinating Council and Government Coordinating Council, have for several years strongly advocated for this type of structural change to better identify and represent the water sector in existing emergency response procedures, protocols, and frameworks.

The creation of this new Water Systems Community Lifeline will help emphasize how critical restoration of drinking water and wastewater services is for community recovery. Community lifelines are designed to increase effectiveness in disaster operations and better position the response to catastrophic incidents. Lifelines allow emergency managers to characterize the incident, identify the root causes of issues, and to distinguish the highest priorities and most complex issues from other incident information.

For more information is available on the FEMA Community Lifelines public website (https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/lifelines) and in the updated Community Lifelines Implementation Toolkit (https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/lifelines-toolkit).